ON NOV. 20, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE reported on former Emory University Professor Michael Bellesiles' controversial book Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture. Bellesiles' career began to unravel after critics began checking footnotes in the book, which was awarded the prestigious Bancroft Prize a year ago. Bellesiles has been charged with making up sources and data backing his assertion that gun ownership was rare on the early American frontier, but he has refused to apologize, maintaining that his scholarship is sound. Initially, historians, including JACK RAKOVE, the Coe Professor of History and American Studies, sided with Bellesiles, but during the last year his circle of supporters has shrunk dramatically. Nevertheless, Rakove keeps Bellesiles' book on his reading list, albeit for a new reason. "It's clear now that his scholarship is less than acceptable," Rakove said. "There are cautionary lessons for historians here."

BUSINESS WEEK ONLINE INTERVIEWED SHARON HOFFMAN, the Business School's associate dean and director of the MBA program, about "stopping out," the increasingly popular trend among women with MBA degrees who temporarily leave the workforce to raise their children at home. "Women are realizing that it's impossible for a human being to have it all," Hoffman said Nov. 21. "It is as unrealistic to think you can have it all with family and a career and with a high level of personal involvement as it is to say you want to take a year-long trip around the world and also tend to the garden all summer."

UROLOGY PROFESSOR ROBERT KESSLER is skeptical of a recent Austrian study claiming that frequent mountain biking may reduce fertility in men. The Associated Press reported Dec. 2 the research suggests that frequent jolts and vibrations caused by biking over rough terrain may cause abnormalities, including small scars within the scrotum and impaired sperm production. Kessler pointed out that scrotal varicose veins, which were among the abnormalities the study linked to mountain biking, are usually congenital and not linked to trauma. "It doesn't make sense," he said.

THREE YEARS AFTER A LANDMARK report found pervasive medical mistakes in American hospitals, little has been done to reduce death and injury, the Washington Post reported Dec. 3. Although the Institute of Medicine's report linked fatigue with preventable medical errors, the nation's 100,000 interns and residents continue to work 80 to 120 hours a week. Professor DAVID GABA and Associate Professor STEVEN HOWARD recently warned in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine that long work hours by doctors, "especially residents, ... are incompatible with a safe, high-quality health care system." If organized medicine doesn't reduce these excessive hours, the anesthesiologists warn, "change may be ultimately forced on us."